Tree Planting Subsidies: EIR release

Information requested

Please provide data spanning from 2019 to 2023 detailing funding awarded under the rural payments scheme which relate to tree planting.

Please list the name of each applicant business – if they are not a registered sole trader or small partnership – and the amount of money given to each applicant.

Please also provide details of the plantations each applicant was funded to create, providing the location, the size and the makeup of trees planted, broken down by species.

Please also specify any inspections given to applicant businesses, detailing whether any breaches were found.

Response

Please see below and attached for some of the information we hold in relation to your request. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because:

• An exception under regulation 10(4)(a) (Information not held at time of request) of the EIRs applies to some of the information you have requested, because the necessary variables are held in individual records but our computer systems do not allow us to collate them into presentable information.
• An exception under regulation 10(4)(b) (Manifestly unreasonable requests) of the EIRs applies to some of the information you have requested, due to the high number of records covered by your request and therefore the high burden of collating and presenting the information. Please see below for details of where this exception applies.
• An exception under regulation 11(2) (Personal data relating to third party) of the EIRs applies to some of the information you have requested, as noted in individual responses below.

Response to your request

Please provide data spanning from 2019 to 2023 detailing funding awarded under the rural payments scheme which relate to tree planting.

Please list the name of each applicant business – if they are not a registered sole trader or small partnership – and the amount of money given to each applicant.

Please also provide details of the plantations each applicant was funded to create, providing the location, the size and the makeup of trees planted, broken down by species.

Total grant figures are available in our Forestry Grant Scheme statistics.

Please see attached for amounts by individual grant for the 2018/19 – 2022/23 financial years. The spreadsheet contains:

• 1 tab for planting funded under the Agroforestry Option.
• 1 tab for woodland creation funded under the Woodland Creation and Woodland Improvement Grant (WIG) Habitats and Species – New Natural Regeneration Options.
• 1 tab for all WIG funding – please note that only the WIG Restructuring Regeneration items represent grants for planting trees. Our systems are unable to produce a report for solely these items.

Please note that we have interpreted “tree planting” as the grant paid for the initial planting or establishment of new trees only. The list includes grants for all tree planting, including new woodland creation, agroforestry, new natural regeneration and the grant provided to diversify restocking proposals following felling. It excludes payments for the ongoing maintenance of newly established woodland.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exception under regulation 11(2) (Personal data relating to third party) of the EIRs applies to some of the information you have requested.

This exception applies because grant recipients may be individuals or sole traders in addition to community groups, businesses, etc., and names of individuals and sole traders are considered personal data under regulation 11(2).

Additionally, our computer systems do not currently collate in summary form applicants as individuals/sole traders versus community groups/businesses/etc., so this categorisation is considered as information not held by Scottish Forestry. We have therefore redacted all business names and postcodes from the attached data, as we cannot be certain which records constitute personal data.

Regarding the locations of the land in question, the ‘property name’ field for each record provides a descriptor of each project. Maps of all grant claims are available on our Open Data Portal under FGS Woodland Creation Claims, and can be filtered by year using the “Filter Data” > approval_year option. Individual grant claims can be highlighted by opening the relevant data set and using the “Filter Data” > case_ref option; inputting the Case Reference for a record will highlight that land on the map.

Regarding species, the spreadsheet breaks down grant awards by FGS option, which provides a breakdown by the nine FGS categories, i.e.:

• Conifer
• Diverse Conifer
• Broadleaves
• Native Scots Pine
• Native Upland Birch
• Native Broadleaves
• Native Low Density
• Small or Farm Woodland
• Northern and Western Isles

Please also specify any inspections given to applicant businesses, detailing whether any breaches were found.

FGS inspection information is held in our case management system at the case level to assist contract managers to manage grant contracts. We do not currently collate data or report on our inspections nationally, so to summarise the total number of inspections or the number of breaches identified would require a manual review of each case application record.

This would require experienced case managers or similarly knowledgeable staff to undertake such a review, and as we approve in the region of 400 woodland creation applications per year, this would equate to approximately 2,000 applications over the period requested.

At an estimate of an hour per application to review each application, determine the investigation status and whether any breaches were discovered, we estimate that this would take around 2,000 hours of staff time. At 37 hours per week, this would represent approximately 54 weeks of a full-time officer’s working time.

Under regulation 10(4)(b) of the Environmental Information Regulations:
“A Scottish public authority may refuse to make environmental information available to the extent that–
[…]
(b)the request for information is manifestly unreasonable”
The Scottish Information Commissioner has provided guidance that this definition includes requests that:

“would impose a significant burden on the public authority […] where complying with it would require a disproportionate amount of time, and the diversion of an unreasonable proportion of its resources, including financial and human, away from other statutory functions. The authority should be able to demonstrate why other statutory functions take priority over its statutory duties under FOISA. If the public authority does not perform statutory functions, it should demonstrate why its core functions are of a higher priority than the statutory requirement to respond to information requests.”

We consider that the diversion of this amount of experienced officer time would meet these criteria, as it would have a significant negative impact on our ability to deliver our statutory responsibility to promote sustainable forest management and our core functions of supporting and delivering the management and expansion of Scotland’s forests in line with the Scottish Government’s Forestry Strategy.

Under regulation 10(1) of the EIRs:
“A Scottish public authority may refuse a request to make environmental information
available if –
(a) there is an exception to disclosure under paragraph (4) or (5); and
(b) in all the circumstances of the case, the public interest in making the information
available is outweighed by that in maintaining the exception.”

We consider that the public interest in making the information available is outweighed by the diversion of resources required to make it available and the associated impact on the delivery of our core functions.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

EIR 202400398096 - Information released - Annex

File type

Excel document

File size

486.5 kB